Chicago Wildlife - 20. What Are We, Some Kind Of...(Part 7)

Mega Chapter 14: What Are We, Some Kind Of... (Part 7)

So the cite of the explosion is a bust. I get there, only to find no signs of that lug whatsoever, save for an oh-so-helpful trail of destruction leading towards Ann & Robert’s. Oh, and a pack of goons frozen solid like a display piece. Guess good ole’ Cid and Fred were already here. I suppose I should tail them. Neither of those two meatheads are good at looking behind them.

I grapple to an adjacent building to get a better view of the surrounding area. Then I hear a truck skid to a stop where I just was. I look down and see more thugs pour out of the convoy.

“Beta Team, this is Alpha Team. Can confirm, Delta Team has been taken out of commission. I repeat, this is Alpha Team. Can confirm. Delta Team has been taken out of commission,” says the leader into an earpiece.

Drats. Now I’ve got a fuse burning behind me and a bomb ticking in front of me. Luckily, I’m a fast sprinter. I run across the rooftop, leap off, and grapple onto the next, and repeat that a few times. Let’s see…it should be around here somewhere. Ah ha! There it is. The almost melted pillars of ice, belonging to one fratboy on a sugar rush. Just keep following these and I’ll catch up to those two in no time. Cid’s a super genius, right? He wouldn’t steer me in the wrong course.

I hear another shot ring out and feel my grappling gun jerk suddenly in my hand. Instinctually, I let go, thinking some punk almost got a lucky shot on my modeling hand. I drop down to the ground, remembering what my dearly departed grandmother taught me and appropriately rolling upon contact. Sure, the flexibility helps absorb some of the shock of landing, but I’m not Superman. I pick myself up and see, wouldn’t you know it, more goons from the goon squad, no doubt here to do goon-related activities with their goon friends. They raise their guns at me as the head goon speaks into a walkie-talkie.

“Gamma Squad here. We have the Playbunny. What are our orders, over.”

Excuse the fuck out of me? That’s my codename to the criminal underworld? I know this suit is skintight, but it’s not like I’m showing more nip than any other male supervillain out there. Hell, I’m more covered up than most of the girls! It can’t be my dummy thicc booty clapping, can it?

“All these boys and just little ole’ me? No wonder you picked that name out,” I say instead. Anything to buy me more time to think of a way out of this.

“Quiet!” the lead prick barks.

The walkie-talkie springs to life and vomits some slurred speech that I can’t make out from where I’m standing. The leader seems to understand it well enough.

“Time to see how a plastic body crumbles when it’s shot full of holes,” he says, leveling his gun at me.

“OR!” I yell back, holding my hands up. “You group of professional, MENSA-qualified gentlemen can pretend that you noticed this chic backpack I’ve been sporting this fashion season, use a little imagination, and realize that MAYBE it contains a bomb that’ll turn all of Gamma Squad into little Gamma Angels.”

Do they believe that? No one’s firing.

“That’s not your M.O.” says the leader. The others are probably afraid to speak out of line.

“With what you’ve been tasked to do tonight and everything else that’s been going on, do you really think you should be playing it safe with formulas? Really?”

More hesitation. I will recite the entire LOTR trilogy tonight if I have to.

“Gaylord, go remove this diva’s purse. If he tries anything, shoot him.”

Okay, that was a dig at both of us. Sergeant Gaylord steps forward slowly, keeping his gun trained on me. I cock an eyebrow.

“Personally, I wouldn’t roll with a gang that saddles me with such a degrading nickname, Gaylord.”

“That’s my birth name, asshole!” Gaylord yells back.

“Ooh, sorry about that.”

He stands before me.

“Take it off,” he demands.

I just smile.

“Don’t you want to see what kind of bomb you’re dealing with?” I offer.

He stares for a moment, and then walks behind me. As soon as he opens the backpack, I whip my upper half around almost completely, grab the man, drag him directly in front of me, using my powers to bend my arms in a way to comfortably immobilize him.

“Hold your fire!” shouts the leader.

“It’s been fun,” I whisper into Gaylord’s ear.

I plant a kiss on his cheek and reach into my backpack, pulling out a small sphere. I close my eyes and throw it to the ground. Flash bomb, bitches.

“Argh, I can’t see!”

With everyone momentarily blinded, I kick Gaylord away from me and take something else out of my bag: smoke pellets. I scatter them in front of me and within moments, the whole field is covered in smoke.

“Where’d he go?! I need visual!”

Gadget number 3: some high-tech goggles I swiped at some point that lets me see body heat. And gadget number 4: a breathing apparatus that filters out stuff like smoke. I run up to poor Gaylord, deliver a sweeping kick to the leg, and as he was falling, I grab his head and bring it down to the concrete. He’ll live. It’s just a bruise.

I sprint towards the next multicolored, thug-shaped blob and drop an elbow blow to the back of the head. The poor, unfortunate soul drops to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

“Over there! I heard something!”

I pitch my voice an octave higher and put on my best Midwestern accent.

“He’s running towards the sewer gate!” I shout.

“Where the hell is that?” cries out someone from my right.

“To your right, dumbass!” I yell back.

I see him run in that direction. Then I hear the sounds of gunshots going off a bit further away from me.

“Stop shooting, you idiot!” someone else screams. “You might hit one of us!”

They’re starting to huddle together. Makes it a bit more difficult to take them all down. The smoke ain’t going to last forever.

“I think I see him!”

I run up to the next one and punch him in the face. It doesn’t knock him out completely, but he does stumble back a little. He throws a punch back, but he’s too slow at doing it, as I bend backwards far more nimbly than most people can. Then I kick him in the nuts. He wails in pain, and as he assumes a standing fetal position, I deliver another blow to the back of the head. He’s down and out, but maybe I shouldn’t have used such a painful method of takedown, seeing as now everybody with working ears knows where I am.

“He’s over here!”

Crap. And this run was going so smoothly. The smoke starts to thin out and I see one of the men take aim at me. I’m just about ready to dodge dramatically out of the way of an incoming bullet, really believing that I could do just that, when the man is rendered unconscious. Or to put it more elaborately, Fred comes from somewhere out of the sky, wielding something that looks like a long, thick icicle, with tiny icicles jutting out of it, and bonking the guy on the head with it, shattering the ice sculpture in the process.

“Slam, bam, thank you ma’am! Don’t think you’ll get to third base with me!” he yells.

He’s looking at me as he says it. I couldn’t possibly get why he’s saying those things to me, specifically.

“I’ve got you,” comes a new voice.

I look behind me to see one of the remaining men lining up his shot. Then a walking, smoldering corpse grabs the barrel of the gun. His hand glows white hot, and the barrel melts right off.

“Ahhh! Ahhh!” the poor sap yells, dropping his half of the gun and backing off.

Cid backhands him hard enough that he goes down. I can only imagine what degree burns the poor fella just sustained.

“This is Gamma Squad! We need backup! I repeat, we need backup immediately!” shouts the leader into his walkie-talkie.

“You need to lighten up,” says Cid, blasting fire through his hands.

“Chill out!” says Fred simultaneously, firing his own ice powers through his hands.

The leader ducks behind the armored truck they used to get here, escaping the blasts. ‘Boys. Time to show them how a man gets the job done.’

I run around the blasts and car, standing right next to the leader, who seems to be too busy reloading his gun to hear me waltz up to him. He has just enough time to look up and see me.

“Nighty-night, princess,” I say, and then kick his head into the side of the truck, knocking him out.

Now then, what about the twins? Friend, or foe? If Persephone got to them as well, then I doubt Fred took much convincing. But he’d also loop his BFF in on the plan, and Cid’s always playing 4D chess with Ken Jennings on TikTok, so if anyone’s going to be able to see a double-cross going on, it’s him. So did Cid decide Persephone is full of shit, or is he about to light my heart on fire?

“Yo! Did ya get him?” shouts Fred.

Are you acting stupid, or is it your normal stupidity?

“Sleeping like a baby,” I call out.

“Then we must return to our pursuit of Mister Michaels,” says Cid.

Better play it safe for now.

“You two fly overhead and get a better view of the land. I’ll keep to the ground, in case he’s hiding in some building.”

I can hear Cid say something to Fred, but not what it is. I hope they know I can run faster than I can run my mouth off.

“We will continue tracking Mister Michaels’ movement towards Ann & Robert’s. The damage caused by his ruckus keeps hinting that that is his final destination. If he paused to take reprieve in a nearby building, I’d advise you not to engage in direct combat with him. He could have any manner of peculiar force to aid him in his quest by this point.”

Friends, or cons playing the long game?

“I’ll lure him out for you guys to play with,” I reply.

And with that, the pair fly off into the sky, and I, unfortunately, have to follow them and try not to be incinerated or frozen solid at a moment’s notice. Joy.

#

Fred decided to put things into a new perspective. His current mission was basically like playing hide and seek, and the person who was hiding was a living bomb! What could be more fun?! Sure, his team had a 3-to-1 advantage, so it wasn’t really a challenge or anything, but sometimes you wanna play with your crew, right? And the added danger of the janitor possibly trying to kill them both just made the game that much more exciting! Sure, Cid didn’t like the added pressure, but he never liked playing with risks to begin with, so that was nothing new.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Fred said aloud, more to himself than anything.

“Perhaps we should not be advertising our presence and intentions to the individual we are attempting to subdue, Fred?”

“Aw, what’s he gonna do? Shoot lightning bolts out of his ass? I can take him.”

“Electrical discharge from his anus may be the least of our worries, if he managed to make contact with DNA samplings from any number of technology previously belonging to incarcerated men or women.”

“No matter what he has, I can handle it!”

And before Cid could somehow turn that comment into yet another whiny speech, the two suddenly saw a giant beam of light just a short while away, spinning about wildly like two people were fighting for control over a floodlight. The lightshow ended as quickly as it started. Fred and Cid looked at each other.

“It could perhaps be Diamond Dood, or Mister Michaels borrowing his light-reflecting skin powers,” Cid said.

“Or Diamond Doodette!” Fred added.

Everyone knew Diamond Doodette was the cooler of the diamond-studded couple. Regardless, as far as Fred knew, neither Diamond Dood nor Diamond Doodette had said on Twitter that they were planning a “date night” tonight, so chances were that it was Ditto Perfect.

“Let us make haste.”

“Are we dumping the wet noodle back there?”

Fred and Cid look back at Robin, who was still trailing behind them. Cid appeared to give it a moment’s thought.

“We’ll bring him along. He’ll add one more complication in Mister Michaels’ plans, which might be the advantage we need. And if he intends to interfere with our mission…”

“Aw yeah! Here’s hoping to ill intent and rash decisions!”

Fred whipped around towards Robin.

“He’s, like, two streets to your right! That’s like a hop, skip, and a jump for you, right?!” he yelled.

Robin was too far away for Fred to see his face, but he imagined that Robin was grinning for sure. Robin grappled up to a nearby building.

“Any new deadly powers I have to be aware of?” he asked.

“A bad case of an aurora borealis,” Fred said.

“That’s not what Mister Michaels was exhibiting,” interjected Cid. “Mister Michaels may have absorbed Diamond Dood and/or Diamond Doodette’s power.”

“Making their skin as tough as diamonds, great,” Robin concluded. “Well, lead the way.”

Fred needed no invitation from Robin to be first on the scene. He may have heard Cid call out for him to wait, but he chose to ignore that. He knew Cid would follow anyway. Fred created a sick slope over a particularly tall building and launched himself right up over the peak of the hill.

“Wa-hoo!” he yelled, feeling like he was king of the world. He felt time freeze as he glided through the air. Being so high up also meant that he could better survey the area around him. There! For just a split second, he could see a flashlight bounce off something in the distance. Ditto Perfect was on the move! Fred created more slopes and began his descent. Then Fred heard a shot go off, and the ice slope he had created for his descent shattered into a million pieces. And Fred kept falling. He was so distracted in the moment that he never saw that rapidly approaching building coming straight for him. He hit his head against the wall and blacked out, still falling towards the unforgiving pavement below.